By living the good life whilst I can.
There's no point in me as a 30 year old planning for a conventional retirement.
The situation now is beyond any hope of recovery. In 40 years time we will all be either burning, starving, drowning or fighting off the people who are.
There is no scientific basis behind this belief.
The IPCC report categorically proves that there is still time to limit warming to 1.5°c. Whether we'll manage that or not is another matter, but we're not screwed yet and I think your doom-baiting outlook is deeply irresponsible. We should demand and have a expectation of action, not lay down and die. Every single split digit of a degree less of warming is worth fighting for, every fewer life lost.
There's a reason climate deniers like Trump have been shifting towards "it's too late for us to do anything": it makes people switch off and give up. It creates inertia. There's literally nothing to gain from being so passive and resigned, and it's deeply unscientific.
The scientific consensus is that there's things we can do, actions we can take. These can inform our decisions at the ballot box, or our word of mouth, or whether we take the streets. We aren't powerless, and acting like we are is very damaging. It's a pretty privileged attitude that other areas of the world can't afford to take.
We're going to need a bigger sandpit if there are already this many heads being buried in it
Quite!
Of course this thread is full of the ysdal blend of denialism, doomism and even ecofascism, to the extent that I'm actually relieved to see some realistic contributions (from
@najaB and
@Techniquest). So many of the denialist arguments here have already been comprehensively debunked, so instead climate deniers are just spouting utter sh!te like "It won't happen because Al Gore once said something contradictory, except he didn't", or "An Inconvenient Truth is boring", as if that disproves entire fields of climatology and ecological study.
I get that your ideological comfort blankets and sense of the sceptic's discerning superiority are nice to maintain, but they're also deeply arrogant beliefs. Discarding an overwhelming scientific consensus for the sake of your own selfish coping mechanisms - the danger you'd rather deny than admit exists, no matter how many people you drag with you - it's the apex of human self-contentment.
I think Summer 2021 has really hit home for a lot of people. Hopefully this all gets brought up at COP26 and that goals are agreed.
The Biden Administration seem to have climate as one of their priorities.
Although, I did see a paper saying that the UK and Ireland have a good chance of surviving collapse of civilisation.
Study citing ‘perilous state’ of industrial civilisation ranks temperate islands top for resilience
www.theguardian.com
I do think we're in the jaws of a turning point at the moment. To hear Tory ministers and Telegraph writers speaking strongly about the climate emergency feels different - even if it's greenwash on some level, they recognise the truth behind it. The difficulty will be stopping them from turning COP26 into a 'glory to Britain' party, but there will still be some politicians with brains at the table. I think Biden's rather overrated on the climate - lots of talk and less action - but he does seem to at least believe that there's a crisis, so let's see...
There's another crucial thing happening too: a developing understanding that the vociferous fossil fuel lobby is an obstacle to human survival, not an accessory to it. Johnson thought pressing ahead with Cambo without permits to get at Sturgeon would be a good move, instead they've been forced to delay...
Antonio Guterres literally said that the IPCC report is a "death knell" for the fossil fuel industry. That's massive; not the sort of rhetoric we've ever heard before. And he's right.
These places will also be top targets for climate refugees, which is unfortunate both in itself and considering those who attack the current refugees fleeing wars (caused by our own foreign policy) also hold a degree of climate denial, when really it would be a very strong argument for climate action (then again maybe those against refugees want them to come so they can keep scapegoating them to cover up all the real problems in society).
Agreed. It's also funny seeing people on here of a certain political persuasion deflect from the climate crisis by talking about Sunni and Shia muslims.
As for the question opening the thread: I do what I can. There's not that much you can do as an individual, but I try to stay optimistic, keep a scientific mind, argue for a survivable world, share info, sign petitions, and generally wade into depressing online debates like these out of a sense of obligation when I'd much rather not. I also don't fly, drive, or eat meat, though I understand that not everyone has the privilege to make those changes and choices.
